


The Piano Teacher

by Troprouge



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Inspired by Novel, Observing/being observed, emotionally repressed Eve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24130072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Troprouge/pseuds/Troprouge
Summary: Eve Polastri is a piano teacher in her forties who teaches at the London conservatory. She lives in an apartment with her husband, Niko, but feels emotionally distraught and repressed. When one of her students starts paying special attention to her, Eve starts losing grip over the little she had previously controlled of her daily life._______________________________Heavily inspired by Elfriede Jelinek's novel The Piano Teacher (1983).
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Niko Polastri, Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	1. Trust is fine, but control is better

The piano teacher, Eve Polastri, bursts like a whirlwind into the apartment she shares with her husband. Her husband like calling Eve his little whirlwind, for the woman can be an absolute speed demon. Eve is in her late forties. Her husband is as old as she is. They both entered the apartment at the same time; eventually, Eve leant how to move swiftly. She had to. Now, she bursts into the apartment like a swirl of autumn leaves, hoping not to be seen. Her husband, Niko, looms before her, confronts her. He puts Eve against the wall, under interrogation - inquisitor and executioner in one, unanimously recognised as the Husband by the State and by the Family. He investigates: Why has Eve come home so late? Eve finisses her last student well over three hours ago, after heaping him with scorn. “You must think I won’t find out where you’ve been, Eve.” He’s waiting. She starts counting to three. By the count of two, Eve offers an answer that deviates sharply from the truth. Her briefcase is snatched from her hands - hidden between four volumes of Beethoven sonatas is the bitter answer to his question. The dress, so seductive and colourful at the shop is now lying on the ground, just a droopy rag pierced by her husband’s glare. His mouth twitches: you’ve squandered our future! We could have had a new apartment someday, but you couldn’t wait. Niko wants everything “someday.” He wants nothing now - except Eve. He wants to save now in order to enjoy someday.

They are saving to buy a new apartment. The one they have now - cramped, out of fashion will be the opposite to their new, state-of-the-art condominium. Eve’s living space consists of her own small room, where she can do as she pleases. Niko’s realm is everything else where he enjoys being the housewife and Eve enjoys the fruit of his labour. There are no locks between their spaces - a married couple has no secrets. Niko does the housework - dust rags and cleansers ruins the pianist’s hands. In his orderly world, Niko worries a lot: just where might Eve be? Is she alone or with someone else? He worries a lot, for the first thing a proprietor learns is: Trust is fine, but control is better.

•

Time around Eve is slowly turning into a plaster cast. If she is not giving lessons to her students, she visits piano recitals occasionally, or goes to a café where she knows Niko can find her, using well the homemade structure of security and intimacy. It was Eve’s desire to be one in a million that pushed her into taking up piano. She wasn’t allowed to associate with normal people and their desires, always needed to practice more and study more and more until Chopin’s and Wagner’s and Schumann’s pain became her own, for the sake of humanity. She had always claimed it to be her higher goal: the study of humanity. How come then, despite the years of practice and study could she not bring herself to study the actual human being she shared her life with? It made her feel nothing. It made her empty with desire. It made her want to drive her head against the wall until it breaks and the contents flow out so she can scavenge through the pieces of her brain, pick them one by one, inspect them and see which one is working. Which one isn’t? Why? Niko would be there. He’d pick away and say “Hm,” with a frown, “Hm, this part appears to not be working well. We are going to have to fix this. Put it away.”

It was also her vanity. Eve couldn’t submit to anyone or anything - if something is irreplaceable it is Eve. Eve hates standardisation in any shape. She is herself and there is nothing that can be done about it - an individual, although full of contradictions. For all the years of her marriage, she has managed to stand alone, has prevented herself of being thoroughly reshaped by a man. How is your husband? the dairy woman asks. Fine, Eve replies. My husband, my husband - not mine, not ever. Time passes and they pass time - enclosed together in a bell jar. Eve is an insect trapped in amber, ageless. Her performance level is impeccable: the London conservatory is a place people would fight tooth and nail for, but she has earned her place fair and square. She studied and interpreted. For marriage and for music. After all, performance is form, too. The performer always puts in something personal in his performance in the goal to play well, but must submit to the creator of the work, which has admittedly been a problem for Eve. She simply cannot submit.

•

One evening, the London weather is hot and humid and Eve is carrying a viola on her back. It is not an easy thing to carry. The mass of passengers, having paid their fare and touched their Oyster cards in, throngs along the platform, sweaty, pulsating. She grips the case tighter: is she is late tonight, it is simply because of the tube, she will say to Niko. Never-mind the inspecting look in his eyes. It is not her fault. Somebody’s kicked her shin and she winces in pain, searching for the culprit. The faces all look the same with their insults, complaints, curses and accusations.

She manages to push her way in the train. She’s barely pushed herself and the instrument in when a girl, in high heels and a fur coat asks her: “What is that called?” “It’s called a viola,” she replies politely. “A _viooola_? Never heard of it, what a weird word,” she says in amusement. Someone passes by. Eve licks her lips in patience. Bodies hang around heavily in between the lucky seated passengers and Eve comes up with a plan. She will get off this train at the next station. She will kick someone in their shin strongly with her viooola. It will hurt and it will maybe bring her the relief she needs. She feels her body grow hot with this thought and small beads of sweat break out above her upper lip. She hears the sound announcement for the next station and makes her way towards the door.

“Someone's kicked me in the shin!” a voice is heard from the mass. Who did it? In every war movie, there’s always at least one person who volunteers. But this isn’t a movie. Eve’s already made her way out of the train, out of the station until the thick, steamy air of London surrounds her. They were furious. She smiles at a woman passing by, forgetting that minutes later she will be the victim of Niko’s sarcastic smile, asking her where she’s been, turning her insides into a pile is ash and leaving her with a bitter taste in her mouth.

•

For all the praise she got for her piano playing, one day, while she is still a child and under her mothers stern gaze, Eve fails miserably. Not even the experts praise her. Afterward, her mother slaps her face. She didn’t make the task easy on herself - the piece she chose, Messiaen, was against her mothers wishes and not suited for the masses. She leaves the room, ashamed, burning with hot anger. What else could she do but become a teacher? After all, many young people are still driven to art, even though a considerable amount of her students will have no future in the profession - soulless, stammering, but delighted to belong to the field of art, whatever that means to them, but there has to be a limit between the gifted and the unfitted. Eve is delighted to draw that limit. Her students are a diverse mix and one seldom finds a rose among them. It is the advanced students that she enjoys teaching the most, the ones who make an effort. She can wrest all kinds of thing from them: Schubert sonatas, Schumann’s _Kreisleriana_ , Beethoven sonatas. After three years, the piano student has to enter next level and to do so, they depend of Eve. Sometimes, she has to push them up to the point of breaking and sometimes she simply gives up, knowing that they would be better off doing something else in life.

•

Lately, Eve likes to think about a student of hers by the name of Oksana Astankova. Oksana is a nice-looking blonde girl that has lately taken up to coming to the conservatory first thing in the morning and leaving last in the evening. Eve is forced to admit she’s working and motivated. She studies French, that much Eve knows. She checked her school records. Oksana has been spending her days at the conservatory lately - when she doesn’t play, she listens to Eve and any of her students play. She seems to have a lot of time on her hands, rather unlikely for a student in the final phrase of her studies. One day, Eve asked her wouldn’t she rather practice French than lounge around, listening to unskilled musicians practice? Doesn’t she have any studying to do? No lectures, no practices, nothing? She says she’s on her semester break, which didn’t occur to Eve. Vacation at the music school doesn’t coincide with vacation at the university. There are no holidays for art, it just follows you everywhere.

Eve is surprised: “How come you always show up here so early, Mrs Astankova? Why do you listen to the others practice?” Oksana lies. “You can profit from anything and everything, no matter how little it may be. You can learn a lesson from just about anything,” says the student. “Besides,” she continues, “I like to listen to you perform, even if it’s just singsong, or the B major scale.” “Don’t flatter your old teacher, Mrs Astankova.” She is not, says Oksana. She replies that she is not old and she is not “flattering” her. She means every word, from the bottom of the heart! “I wanted to ask you for some homework, something extra to do,” Oksana gazes expectedly at Eve, hoping for a hint. Eve cuts her down to size: “You still don’t know your Shönberg that well.” The student enjoys being at the hands of such a teacher, even when she looks down at her while holding the reins tightly.

One evening, after picking her up from the conservatory for a stroll, arm in arm, interwoven, looking at shop windows-elegant shoes, pocket-books, hats, jewellery-Niko makes a remark. “That young girl seems to have a crush on you,” he says. The weather is beautiful, flowers are blooming and spring is coming. The neighbourhood they are walking through - their neighbourhood, is a quiet one, with government workers, officials, clerks. There are few children. The chestnut trees are blooming and the trees are blossoming. Eve doesn’t reply.

She thinks back to a summer spend with her mother, in Connecticut, when she was fourteen. She think of tedious piano practices, so repetitive that the neighbours closed their windows with scowls, so long that her afternoons couldn’t possibly be spent playing with the neighbourhood children, outside. She thinks back to the only hot, humid afternoon spent playing in the grass with her friend two years her senior, of her grip on her knuckles as she pinned them to the ground. Her friend used a secret grip. She stands over Eve, triumphant. She grabs her wrists, squeezes and crushes. The sunlight plays with their heads, Eve tries to be mindful of her hands, her precious tools. She has one ear turned to the noise outside, and one to the loud thumping of her heart. She becomes painfully aware of every passing second. Somewhere in her back, her bones crack crudely, hinges grind: they were squeezed too hard. She’s already kneeling. A thin varnish of tears shines on her face as she peeks up into her opponent. She is happy about her victory. Eve glances to the girl’s lips, leans into them for a split second. She doesn’t quite know what she’s doing. She wants to feel it all just once, she wants to graze that glittering Christmas-tree ornament with her lips, just this once. Her friend doesn’t realise she’s started a landslide in Eve. She peers and peers. Just let this moment linger, it’s so good. No one around has noticed anything - they are preparing lunch.

Her friend releases her instantly and swings back one step. She sways back and forth embarrassedly into the air, then dashes off and is gone. Her friend doesn’t return until much later, for dinner. They’re playing cards on the veranda. Eve observes the butterflies circling the kerosene lamp while her friend observes herself not observing Eve. Eve is not attracted by a bright circle. Later, in her room, she lies on her stomach, with her hand between her legs, thinking about the hot grass and the hard grip on her knuckles. Oh, she thinks. _Oh_.

Eve doesn’t reply.

Days later, she will be walking down the street after her working day. She observes the people watching TV, eating dinner, walking back home - the building fronts become flat backdrops, behind which there is probably nothing. All the people around here experience the same things at the same time. Why was she out of tune, then? What is wrong with me, she thinks. What could possibly be wrong? Why is there simultaneously a gap in my chest and a bomb getting ready to explose? She stomps the wet concrete. Without knowing where she is going, she is going there. Her pocket is filled with coins. She stops in front of the old-fashioned sex shops attached to the peep show. Few women ever come here, but Eve likes getting her own way - if many people do one thing, she likes to do the opposite. If someone says go, she alone says stop. Now, she cants to come here. A couple of helpless looking men stand around.

All Eve wants to do is watch.

Here, in this booth, she becomes nothing. Nothing fits into her, but she fits exactly into this call. A compact tool in human form. She feels light inside of her. She is personally assigned a deluxe booth - she doesn’t have to wait, she is a lady. She waits, feels nothing, but wants to just look. Look hard. Eve, watching but not touching. The booth smells of disinfectant.

A black-haired woman assumes a creative pose so the onlooker can look into her. She rotates on a sort of potter’s wheel. First, she squeezes her thighs together, nothing can be seen, still mouths fill with the heavy water of anticipation. Eve watches. The object of her peeing thrusts her hand between her thighs and shows her pleasure by forming a tiny O with her mouth. She closes her own eyes, reopening them and rolling them up very high in her head. She massages her nipples, then sits down comfortable and splays her legs far apart. Eve watches closely. Nothing stirs inside of her, but she watches all the same, for her own pleasure. The woman’s artificial nails tug at her nipple as if it were rubber, then let it bounce back. Eve has reached her limit. She stands up. She leaves. A man greedily takes her place. She marches away from the place, walks and walks mechanically from the place. Do nothing halfheartedly, her mother always said. Nothing vaguely. Eve walks along. Nothing is torn, nothing is faded. She’s achieved nothing.

At home, she and Niko eat a duck stuffed with chestnuts. The chestnuts around bursting through the seams of the duck. Afterwards, she presses Niko’s mouth to her own and accepts him in her body, thinking of rubber bodies, hot grass and a hard grip on her knuckles.


	2. Stay where you are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chase begins.

The very private chamber concert for voluntary listeners takes places in an old apartment on by the Thames river; a Polish émigré family, which has lived in London for four generations now, has opened up its two grand pianos and its rich collection of scores. Mozart violas and violins hang lovingly on the wall, taken down only for purposes of study. Or in case of fire. These people love music, and want others exposed to it, by force if necessary. Like addicts or junkies, they absolutely have to share their hobby with as many people as possible. No snacks are served, no refreshments. Chewing gum is simply out of question.

Eve has gathered all her students for the recital. Some come out of pure love for the music, others to admire the clean apartment with violas on the wall, and some because of pure fear or infatuation with Eve.

As a curtain-raiser, Bach’s second concerto for two pianos. The second piano is played by an old man, who, earlier in his life, once performed at Brahms Hall, on a single piano all to himself. Those times are past, but the oldest people here can still remember. The old man, despite his age, greets Professor Eve Polastri, his partner at the second keyboard, by gallantly kissing her hand—a national custom.

The recital is about to begin. Niko sits in the front row, legs crossed and gazing lazily at Eve. The light is dimmed and a cushion is popped against the piano lamp. Children scrape their feet against the floor one last time, parents in their Sunday best.

Oksana Astankova hasn’t missed a singly evening here ever since she started her classes at the conservatory and working on a piano seriously and not just for fun. Bach starts playing, and Oksana, with a secret hunger, observes the back of her piano teacher, whose body is cut off by the stool. This is all she can see of her figure, with Niko’s scruffy head blocking her view. Her second seat is occupied - during the lessons, she always sits at the second piano. Oksana eyes Eve hungrily. During the final movements of Bach, her cheeks get flushed. She unselfishly admires Eve’s technique, admires the way her back moves to the beat, the way her head sways, judiciously weighing the nuances she produces. She sees the play of muscles in her upper arm, is excited by the collision of flesh and motion. The flesh obeys an inner motion that has been triggered by the music, and Oksana beseeches her teacher to obey her some day. Her shuffles in her seat, crosses her legs. One of her hand twitches. She’s has a hard time controlling herself on her seat. She thinks Eve looks just delightful. She tries to mentally reassess her goals in life: she is crazy about music. She is also secretly crazy about her music teacher. She is of the highly personal opinion that Eve Polastri is the very woman that could give her exactly what she needs.

Oksana Astankova, secretly in love, clamps her teeth into the vestige of one of her fingernails. Her face is flushed, her blush spread slightly over her neck. Her dark blonde hair reaches just slightly below her shoulders. She is dressed in a dark suit with a white t-shirt and golden earrings. She knows she looks good; she is aware that she is intelligent. She wears her hair in a loose bun, dyes it blonde and often goes out only to return to her apartment accompanied by another woman, ready to kneel in front of her and satisfy her needs. She is not used to resisting temptation, and she is certainly not used to being denied what she wants. One of these days, she would love to give her piano teacher a long kiss and feel her body against hers. She wants to confront her with her animal instincts - to graze her firmly, almost accidentally, as if some clumsy oaf were pushing her against her. She will then press harder against her, but apologize. Eventually, she will press against her on purpose, check Eve’s reaction to her body.

Soon, she wants to kiss her teacher until she almost suffocates. She will suck her all over, wherever she may. She will bite her wherever she lets her. Later on, she will consciously indulge in extreme intimacies. She will start with her hand and work her way up, like she did many times with different women. She will teach her how to love, or at least accept, the body she has always negated. She will cautiously teach her everything she needs for love. Someday she wants to become her teacher. She doesn’t like those dark-blue pleated skirts and shirtwaists she always wears, and with so little self-awareness to boot. Her clothes should be youthful and colorful. Colors! Professor Polastri, you may believe that your appearance is your enemy, and the only friend you have is music. Why, just look in the mirror, look at your reflection, you’ll never find a better friend than yourself. So just make yourself a little pretty, Eve. If I may call you that. She squirms in her seat.

Often, Oksana goes running and enjoys keeping her body in good physical shape. She feels like she conquers the element that is her own body, turning it into a tool. She would likewise loves to subjugate her teacher. One day, Eve will feel the strength of her young body, she will give it all. She will call her by her name: Eve! Some people like one thing; Oksana like this.

The performance has finished. The two performers get up and bow to the audience. The crowd blinks slowly into the light, someone has removed the cushion. Eve feels the crowd surround her, brush against her, talk nonsense at each other. Under her scrutinizing gaze, the crowd shrinks and fades away. She quickly scans the audience: the only one that is here for her and her only, she knows, is Oksana.

Oksana, making her way over to her, beams at her with blue eyes. Her two hands reach for her pianist hand, and he says, Congratulations, adding that words fail her, Professor. Niko steps in, smiling at the two women. Eve takes hold of Oksana’s arm; the intimate gesture makes Oksana tremble. A silent moment passes between them. “I’ve got to say hello to Professor Vyoral, if you don’t mind. I’ll see you later, Ms Astankova!”

Eve makes her way through the crowd, with Niko trailing along, holding on to her black coat. She trips along on her high heels across the smooth ice of the inlaid floor (areas subject to great stress are protected today by cheap runners). Eve heads toward an older colleague in order to receive congratulations from expert lips. Niko has his hand on Eve’s back, on her right shoulder blade.

Oksana, still watching Eve’s figure make her way through the crowd, slowly starts approaching Eve again. She doesn’t mind, she has an astonishing amount of energy. As if attached to her with suction cups, she trails after Eve and the morbid figure of her husband. She stops in her tracks. Watches Niko’s had trail up against Eve’s back. A sheen of sweat starts breaks out on her upper lip; she blinks her eyes rapidly. Gulps once, sticks to Eve. If she needs her, she will be right at hand. She only has to turn around and she’ll bump right into her. She actually seeks this body check. The brief intermission is almost over. She inhales Eve’s presence with flaring nostrils as if she were on a high meadow that one seldom visits, so one must therefore breathe deeply. In order to bring a lot of oxygen back to the city. She carefully removes a stray hair from the sleeve of her dark coat, replying thanks, oh, my.

Deliberately ignoring Eve’s husband, Oksana makes small chat on contemporary piano music, judging it for its inaccessibility. Eve warns her to avoid fashionable judgments until you have a wider grasp, my dear colleague. Oksana is happy to hear the word “colleague” from competent lips. Colleague, she repeats to herself. Next comes a Eve/Oksana duet about the local concert business. Molto vivace. Their duet is well rehearsed. Neither musician has any part in this business. They are allowed to participate only as consumers, yet their qualifications are vastly superior. The conversation must be stopped: it is time for another recital. Brahms lieder, sung by a young soprano, a student, and then it is all over. The audience claps enthusiastically, adding a few “Bravo!”s, because it is all over, and soon they will be able to return to their homes. Even more bravos are exchanged - not only from Niko, but also from Eve’s best pupil. The husband and the best pupil scrutinise each other from the corners of their eyes, both shouting energetically and growing terribly suspicious. One wants something; the other does not care to give it up.

Oksana strides over and helps her piano teacher into her dark winter coat; she is quite familiar with her coat from all their lessons. It’s got a belt and it’s also got that ugly collar. She would like to continue the conversation, she walks along Eve until they exit the building. Niko stands around, narrowing his eyes at her, but goes entirely unnoticed by either of the women. “I’ll walk with you a while,” Oksana offers. She continues trying to think of ways how can she invite Eve for a glass of wine so that the her husband doesn’t notice. Her thoughts go no further. Her teacher is pure for her. See the husband home, take Eve out. Eve! She pronounces her name. She pretends she has misunderstood, and she quickens her pace, so we can advance, and so the young woman won’t have some bizarre whim. She should simply go away: there are so many streets she can vanish in. Once she’s gone, she and her husband will gossip about the fact that this student has a secret crush on her.

In the dark underpass of the elevated line, Oksana makes a daredevil attempt, she briefly grabs at the professor’s hand. Give me your hand, Eve. This hand can play the piano so marvelously. Now the hand coldly slips through her net and is gone. A puff of air arose, and then the air fell still again. Eve acts as if she hasn’t noticed the attempt. First misfire. The hand got up its nerve only because Erika’s husband was walking side by side with them for a brief distance. Eve walks slowly until her husband catches up with her; Oksana’s hand falls by her own side.

She opens and closes her mouth. She catches up with the couple, restarting small talk with Eve, this time on the subject of the approaching cold weather. She makes a last attempt to spread her wings. She blares about knowing a good way to prevent colds: You have to harden your body in advance. She arduously mumbles something about skiing, the season’s about to start. You don’t have to go that far from the city to reach the finest slopes, almost any angle you like. Isn’t that great? Why don’t you come along sometime, Professor, young people belong together. We’ll find friends my age there, and they’ll take marvelous care of you, Professor. Niko terminates the conversation: We’re not all that athletic.

At last, the trolley stop heaves into view, the plexiglas shelter is illuminated reassuringly, as is the small bench inside. A lamp is shining. Two other people are waiting, a pair of women, unescorted, unprotected. This late at night, the metro run less frequently, and Oksana still won’t leave. The trolley arrives and blithely carries off Eve and her husband. Oksana waves, but the couple is preoccupied with pushing through the crown of people already formed in the train.

°

During breaks between piano lessons, Eve often catches Oksana reading important books for her upcoming degree examination. She is making plans and courageously talking about them. Sometimes, she absentmindedly gazes through Eve in order to repeat an expresses, a difficult word or some formula in French. Oksana tries, but can never catch Eve’s eye that has been majestically inspecting the ceiling for a long time now. Eve tris to only see the musician in Oksana, she does not look at her so as not to realise that she means something to her. On the inside, she starts burning up, then orders herself to stop. She would never get into a situation in which she might appear weak, much less inferior. That is why she stays where she is.

The last bit of daylight crumbles like leftover cake in clumsy fingers. Evening is coming, and there are fewer and fewer students in the daily chain. There are more and more intervals. In the evening, the adults, who have to work hard all day, come to her in order to practice music. The students who want to be professional musicians, mainly as teachers of the discipline in which they are now students, come during the day because they have nothing else but music. They want to master music as thoroughly and completely as possible in order to get their degrees. They generally listen to their colleagues play and then they sharply criticize them together with Professor Polastri. They are unabashed about correcting other people’s mistakes, of which they themselves are guilty. They listen frequently, but they can neither feel nor emulate. After the last student, the chain runs backward all night, until nine in the morning, when, filled with fresh candidates, it advances again. The gears click, the pistons bang, the fingers move in and out. Sounds are emitted.

Oksana has sat through three foreign students playing their lessons and is now cautiously inching towards her teacher. The foreign students play the accompaniment for Oksana; in their tried-and-true equanimity, they are insensitive to the vibrations between the well-tempered teacher and the student who wants the absolute.

Oksana voices her opinion about the soul of a musical work, that soul being very difficult to drive out of it. Yet some people manage to do so; they should stay home if they can’t feel. Oksana, the honor student, jeeringly points out that the foreign students will not find a soul in the corner of the room. Oksana, says she is not happy enough, not healthy enough for all Romantic music (including Beethoven). She begs her teacher to glean her unhappiness and unhealthiness from her marvelous playing. What we need is a music that makes us forget our sufferings. Animal life (!) should feel deified. People want to dance, triumph. Light, rollicking rhythms, tender, golden harmonies, no more and no less. Such are the wishes of the philosopher whose anger is provoked by so little; and Oksana concurs. When do you actually live, Eve? the student asks, pointing out that there is enough time left in the evening to live if one takes the time. Half the time belongs to Oksana; the other half is for her to dispose of.

Eve dismissed the students for the day. She feels a human body behind her, and it gives her the creeps. Oksana shouldn’t get so close as to graze her. She goes somewhere behind her and then goes back. This movement demonstrates her aimlessness. She finally emerges in the corner of her eye, jerking her head like a pigeon, holding her young face in the luminous cone emitted by the lamp, which burns brightest here. Eve feels dry and small.

The image of Oksana is glowingly projected into Eve’s visceral cavity and cast, upside down, on her interior wall. Here the image stands sharp, on its head; and at this very moment, when it has turned into a body for her, a body that can be touched with hands, it has also turned completely abstract, losing its flesh. The very instant that both have become physical for each other, they have broken off any reciprocal human relations.

Oksana’s face is as smooth as a mirror. Two sharp nostrils are turned towards Eve. She watches her silently. Then again, Eve thinks, why not? Oksana should lust for her, should pursue her, should lie at her feet, should be haunted by her, there should be no escape for her. Let it begin.

Oksana talks of abstract subjects. Eve barely catches a word of what she says. “To change the subject, Professor, I must tell you—and I will explain it in greater detail—that a human being attains their supreme value only when they let go of reality and enters the realm of the senses, which should apply to you, too.”

In Eve’s head, there is only one source of light, the shiny sign that says: Exit. She gets up abruptly, starts moving objects around the room. She pointedly looks at the clock, mumbles something barely comprehensible about being tired and having a long day.

Oksana stands there, gazing at her.

Not wanting the silence to go on, Eve takes up an impossible task - talking for the sake of talking. She talks to prevent the eruption of silence. I, as a teacher, favor undramatic art—Schumann, for instance. Drama is always easier! Feelings and passions are always merely a substitute, a surrogate for spirituality.

Oksana abruptly becomes angry. She drags her angry body to the piano, sits down forcefully, plays something long that she learns by heart in a tempo that exceeds the speed limit, much too fast and much too loud. Eve’s mouth turns into a soft, pink O. “You’re playing much too fast and also much too loud, Ms Astankova, and you’re merely proving that the absence of the spiritual in an interpretation can cause terrible lacunae.”

The girl catapults backward into a chair. She stands, steaming, like a racehorse that has brought home a lot of victories. She demands to be rewarded, to be treated with care and love, extensively. Eve can sense it.

Eve wants to go home. Without turning, she offers Oksana some good advice: simply walk around London and breathe deeply. “Then play Schubert, but this time correctly!”

“I’m leaving, too.” Oksana collects her things and sprints out of the room. Her blonde hair flutters behind her as she dashes into the toilets, where she gulps down a pint of water straight from the faucet. The liquid can’t wreak much havoc inside her water-weathered body. She then splashes her face, splashes her head: Billows of mountain springwater, flowing cleanly from the headwaters, end on her face and head. I always drag beautiful things through the mud, she says to herself. She scrubs her hands with energy that she cannot use elsewhere. She keeps tapping green liquid soap from the dispenser, over and over again. Her mouth emits artificial, meaningless sounds. She has got love trouble. She snaps her fingers and cracks her joints. She presses into the wall with the tip of her shoe. She closes the faucet so tight that her successor will not be able to open it. She feels drained and angry. She tosses the paper she used to wipe her face carelessly into the bin, misses it and leaves the toilet without closing the door.

Outside, Eve is waiting for the right figure to show up: when she sees her, she runs in order to catch up with Oksana, keeping her distance. Eve hurries through the streets after her - Oksana, burning with, rage over things unfulfilled and anger about things undesired, doesn’t suspect that love, no less, is dashing after her, and at the same speed, to boot. The two of them wind and weave through the streets of Vienna, one trying to cool off, and the other heating up with jealousy. Back at home, Niko will be so offended by her lateness that he will burst the sausages in in order for them to soak up water and taste bland and dull. Eve Polastri follows Oksana, who, without looking back, enters the doorway of a middle-class town house. Eve doesn’t go in after her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The next chapter is gonna be NSFW (heh).
> 
> Much of the sentences and the writing style were inspired by The Piano Teacher. My own writing style is much less serious than with bad attempts at being funny, so thank god I'm stealing somebody else's style.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!


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